ethical business building the future: #discoveringhow

welcome to ebbf’s new podcast

#discoveringhow is ebbf’s podcast series where you will listen to the personal experiences and insights from ebbf members, people from around the world living their strong sense of mission in their workplace. In each episode we offer you stepping stones, fresh ideas, personal learnings of people who believe that ethical business can and should build the future.Scroll down to listen to the first episodes | Click here to join the ConversationThe music featured in the podcast was kindly created and donate by the Licata BrothersEpisode 16 – The Difficult but worthwhile path towards new meaningful careers

In this episode we discover key decisions one should address when you are about to make a career change.Two ebbf members also share the struggles and how they lived through their personal career transitions in their professional and personal life.Enrico Giraudi made the shift from a career working for marketing goals of mutlinationals to working for the wellbeing of people. His path from knowing “this is not my place any more” to the fear of moving away from a stable job and one’s fake identity. “The challenge is that you don’t move a step if you don’t know what you are moving towards and one often over estimates one’s current status”. What gave his strength was his feeling that “the first steps I took, gave me a sense of happiness and wellbeing worth pursuing”.But first Dr. Graham Boyd has a PhD in theoretical particle physics. In a significant career change he left physics to work for Procter & Gamble and is now the CEO of Evolute Six a network of practitioners that promote work as a strategy for both professional and personal development “changing careers is most complicated than we might think and first coherence with the rest of one’s life”

In this episode we discover traits of emerging leadership styles. New strategies inspire new questions like:how can we redefine success to embrace the true nature of humanity and challenge the predominant assumption that competition, exclusivity and individualism are necessary to be successful?What would happen if we moved beyond diversity categories like gender and other under represented groups and instead viewed ourselves through a lens of coherence across the range of human identity?

As we evolve towards the achievement of the equality of women and other marginalised groups what questions are not being asked? ebbf board member Wendi Momen offers her thoughts on this and other issues.

Mary Darling the co-owner of Westwind pictures, executive producer of highly successful Canadian Netflix series Little Mosque in the Prairie, shares her ideas working in a male-dominated industry.What happens when we bring feminine leadership into directing a movie or leading a workgroup?How do we ensure that we really hear diverse voices when do we know when the right level of diversity is present to make the best decisions?

Episode 14 – What educational governance can build ethical leaders?

How can education prepare society’s change agents of the future?How can educational institutions exemplify governance with high ethical principles?

We hear from Maelys de Rudder how a school in post-war Bosnia transformed itself from conflict to collaboration.But first Vivek Nair is the director of the School of the Nations in Macau. Students fulfill the dual purpose of academic accomplishment and service to their communities and “this contributes greatly to their preparation as ethical leaders and collaborators”.

Episode 13 – Rethinking Education

Many aspects of who we are and how we live our lives arre determined by our experiences in the formative years. In this episode we explore how to introduce new forms of education that will create leaders able to shape a better future.

Later in the program we hear the first hand experience of Badi Shams who founded a school in India based on high ethical principles and what establishing a school taught him about learning.

But first Gordon Naylor, the director of the Nancy Campbell Academy in Canada, thinks deeply about what kind of education is needed to nurture tomorrow’s change agents and transformational leaders.

Episode 12 – The unusual values-based story of a French bakery in … New Delhi

In this episode we are taking you to India, where the dream of a Persian French family of taking to India the culinary pleasures of a very typical French Patisserie comes true. The Christine, Kazem and Laurent Samandari first share practical ideas on how to make sure such a dream can come true and then in the second part of this podcast we dig deeper into the values that are at the foundation of this very successful enterprise, planning to have over a 100 patisseries spread around India.

Episode 11 – The ethical challenge of an inclusive global governance for business

We’re discovering more about the ethical challenges of organizational governance: Doug Henck presents the obstacles he was faced with doing business ethically around the world, Roxann Stafford offers her perspectives on inclusive governance and Augusto Lopez-Claros on what needs to change in corporate governance to better align with the interests of society?

Episode 10 – new financial, local and global trends pushing us to rethink governance

Sean Hinton is the CEO of the Soros Economic Development Fund at the Open Society Foundation. He is interested in the relationship between individuals and governance, pre-distributive ownership mechanism where wealth is more evenly distributed even before it is created. He shares ideas about inclusive growth and how we can move out of inequality moving towards more just and even distribution by building the capacity for active participation of wider groups in organizations’ governance.First Jenna Nicholas CEO of impact experience exposes the impact investing trends that are being fuelled both by a new grassroots and mainstream level awareness and shares the consequent shift in power and trust that she has observed over the past few years

Episode 9 – Personal paths and tools to meaningful work and workplaces

On today’s program we are learning more about practical strategies some ebbf members used to find meaningful work or make their current work meaningful.Alex Cabon explains how difficulties have prepared him to find meaningful work. Payam Zamani offers concrete examples of putting his company’s values into action. Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes on action labs, a methodology to interact explore and experiment with the application of meaningful ideas.

Episode 8 – Personal stories that shaped people’s meaningful careersWe discover how people find their own path to meaningful work, hearing three personal stories of ebbf members whose formative years set the stage to develop work that is meaningful and transformative for society: Dhairya Pujara shaping his views in his early days in India , Elsie Maio and her childhood memory that changed the whole course of her career in the US and Naysan Naraqi a global citizen inspired by what surrounded him growing up in Papua New Guinea.

Episode 7 – Collaboration, the shift from self interested competition

In this episode we learn about collaboration, Leyla Tavernaro explains collaboration in the South African context and Vahid Masrour offers insights into how this is lived at Wikipedia. Michael Karlberg shares how it is necessary to change the culture of contest for collaboration to flourish in society.

Episode 6 – How can consultation evolve decision-making and other organizational processes?

In this program Françoise Le Goff will explain how she used consultation to implement a large, complex project involving hundreds of people, millions of dollars and many different personal agendas. And, Valerie Arnold poses the question, what biases do we bring to a consultative process and how can we keep them in check?

But first, the term consultation can be confusing. To many people, consultation means the seeking of advice from an expert or to have a discussion about a specialized topic. But consultative processes represents a paradym shift potentially affecting every aspect of society. In this episode we offer universal principles to create a more effective consultative process, inspired by the Writings of the Baha’i Faith. The success of applying these principles is not limited to taking good decisions, but more widely allows us to create fruitful learning experiences that fully engage the diversity of ideas and talents of all people involved.

Trip Barthel has worked for many years as a mediator. He has developed nine stages of consultative decision-making he believes offer participants opportunities for personal as well as organizational growth. Here is how he defines consultation.

Episode 5 – New approaches to diversity as a key resource to your enterprise

In this episode we aim to understand more about the application of diversity in business. Payam Zamani shares his practical experience with various forms of diversity in his global tech startup company, Carl Emerson offers some wisdom about managing diversity in organizations. Arthur Dahl on what we can learn about human diversity from what is found in nature and the interconnectedness that we can harness.

Episode 4 – Transitioning towards the spiritual enterprise

In this fourth episode of ebbf’s ethical business building the future #discoveringhow podcast we hear more about the function of spiritual values in companies.Doug Henck gives us practical examples from his career for applying spiritual values in complex global business environments. Marjo Lips-Wiersma new mandates for corporations for responsible conduct as well as profit. First Maja Groff shares her views on justice as a core principle supporting spiritual values.

Episode 3 – The evolution of business: how it lost and now needs to regain its connection with society

In Episode 3 of ebbf’s #discoveringhow podcast we will hear how maverick playwright, best selling author, Fullbright scholar and business school professor Dorothy Marcic sees the evolution of business over time. Wendi Momen explains a practical case of how a company reacted to global changes, putting their stakeholders first and how it paid off.

Ralph Blundell reads ebbf member James Jennings’ article on how to integrate humanity into the operating system of a business.

Episode 2 – How can ethical business build the future? Transitioning towards the spiritual enterprise.

In Episode 2 of ebbf’s #discoveringhow podcast we hear from Marc Rivers on how he found himself wanting to use his position as CFO at one of the world’s largest Pharma companies to use spiritual values important to him in a way that would give meaning to his global team of financial controllers. Elsie Maio shares how the function of Spiritual Values in Companies’ can transform purpose, relationships and results. Listen to how Marc Rivers and Elsie Maio work with the power of truth in finance, branding, writing, consulting and leadership.We read Jenna Nicholas and Daryn Dodson’s insights into how spirituality is affecting and will influence in the near future the area of finance.

Episode 1 – meaningful work, how ebbf members view it and live it

In Episode 1 of ebbf’s #discoveringhow podcast we hear from Dhairya Pujara and how his need for meaningful work made him leave his job on day one and on the traits of meaningful work that Stephane Zahrai has experienced and suggests other enterprises live up to.Finally Serge Thill offers an article with his own ideas on the principles behind meaningful work, read by South African ebbf member Tahirih Michot.

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